With careful stitches and meticulous work, a ragdoll carefully sews back a torn limb on a panda who is crying out his troubles (girl troubles… isn’t it always a girl?) while he sips from a daintily painted teacup filled with brandy.

In another room in the shoebox house she calls home, the ragdoll’s other patients wait patiently for her craft. A Mekka bulldozer, metal with chipping yellow paint, is missing his front left wheel. He holds a vinyl doll’s head, waiting for it to be glued into the empty wheel well. It won’t roll quite the same, he knows, but he can live with the handicap until he scavenges a better part.

The ragdoll finishes with her panda patient and wishes him a cheery farewell, tucking his payment (2 buttons and a tiny watch gear) into her skirt pocket. She quickly schools her face to hide her sly, greedy smile when she steps across the threshold to the waiting bulldozer. His repair is going to need glue, and glue is a costly resource, my friend…

Threadbare RPG is a role-playing game in which you play a jury-rigged toy in a broken world. Caught in a world where Entropy is a constant danger, you’ll patch yourself up, invent new devices, and maybe make new friends along the way.

Threadbare is a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse role-playing game by Stephanie Bryant. You’ll need two 6-sided dice and a group of 2-5 friends to play.

A few things I found in the book that are not made evident by the store page.

1. The game is based on the powered by the apocalypse system but, to quote the pdf "threadbare stays low-combat by removing combat Moves mechanically from the game." In other words if you want a traditional RPG with combat, this is not the place to get it. Despite this declaration early in the text, there is still a large amount of references to combat and things used in combat. The combat included, called a "Fight song" is said to happen in a montage however how it mechanically plays out is vague, with players determining outcomes. It seems, in looking at it, that its the sort of combat system that requires a good group to work effectively otherwise it could be easily abused by players who just want to steamroll over challenges.

2. The game devotes a strange amount of space to trigger warnings, x-cards (and similar devices), boundaries, racism, gender, and sex. It seems out of place...See more and oddly ideologically motivated to go in depth and explain that toys don't have genitals or that toys can be whatever gender they want in a game ostensibly aimed at kids or at least with a very "Childish" tone.

3. The tone and sometimes the mechanics of the game seem confused and inconsistent in an attempt to remain inclusive or diplomatic. The text references body horror and cannibalism before spending a page talking about trigger warnings and rapidly backpedaling away from anything "Squicky". It states specifically that "Ableism and disability are also different concepts in a world where everybody has adaptations. A character with no eyes can still perceive the world, and not every toy chooses to repair damaged Parts. A toy might leave a Part forever broken." Before then explaining hindrances and how broken parts give minuses to rolls. It also attempts to split itself into three "Ratings" for different types of players, giving restrictions on what sort of things players can do and the situations they can run into.

4. The game is HEAVILY skewed towards player control and very subjective. Character death, for instance, "must drive the story forward and must be decided on by both the person playing that character and the GM." Meaning that a character can literally never die unless their player expressly allows it. There's nothing wrong with that in theory, but many GM's prefer something more crunchy and objective to prevent player misbehavior.

5. Pages 89-104 are devoted entirely to building toys. These tutorials are well done and well documented however the cobbled together toys they produce have no mechanical usage in the game. They are effectively just character portraits.

6. A large portion of the book (pages 43-88) is devoted to world building, presenting sample adventures, and minigames. The actual mechanics of the system take up a relatively small part of the text.

7. The mentioned system of crafting (for which I bought this) is serviceable but also very simple. Effectively, the GM decides on a few required parts and a certain mount of generic "Stuff" plus a certain number of "Helpers" needed. These devices gain simple moves and attribute scores (Attributes which can be made up to fit the device it seems) which allow them to interact with the world and function as bonuses and negatives to player rolls. Again, its simple but it works, though it may prove easy to exploit depending on the GM and the Players.

Overall, the tone and systems are a lot more hands off, collaborative story driven, and non-violent than the store page and the cover make it seem.

Alan BFebruary 14, 2018 12:59 am UTC

PURCHASER

I hate to ask, but is POD coming?

Stephanie BFebruary 14, 2018 5:56 am UTC

PUBLISHER

Yes! It'll be a couple more weeks. I'm still fulfilling backer orders, but we're almost done! Check back towards the end of February (2018, in case this comment stays up a long time.)

i have played this game a few times usually with teen girls with limited gaming experience and found thia to be perfect they have little experience and gave them a tasfe of gaming without being overpowering. the ladies if they could i am sure would st [...]

I love this game. I first encountered this game as a player at BBC in 2017. I fell in love with it. It's an interesting PBtA game that allows for several different themes from a My Little Pony friendship theme to a gritty, stitchpunk, body horro [...]

I really like this game. I have played with adults and children and both groups have had a lot of fun. Everyone seems to enjoy bringing their favourite toys to the table. The prohibition on combat in the game takes some getting used to - it is surpr [...]

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